Sarah Debnam

SLM 521/Fieldtrip Activity

October 19, 2004

This brochure contains a fieldtrip package to four outstanding destinations that will amaze and educate you! You will be leaving your backpacks in this English classroom as you embark to Farmington Hills, Michigan, England, Washington D.C., and Amsterdam. You will be traveling to both real and virtual museums, and finally, to the actual house of Anne Frank. This fieldtrip package is designed as a pre-reading activity to Anne Frank: the Diary of a Young Girl. So, before you begin reading you will be traveling the world to learn about the Nazi regiment of World War II and what life was like during this unfortunate historic time.

We will start our trip at The Holocaust Memorial Center which is located in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Here we will begin our tour in the Oral History Department where will read actual testimonies of some of the survivors of the Holocaust and we will visit the online exhibition where you can view a plethora of historic items.

We will then visit a timeline of the holocaust and walk through a chronology of the concentration camp system.

Our second trip will take us to England to the Sainsbury’s Archives Virtual Museum where we will discover what life was like for women in business in Europe during world War II, what rationing food was like, and what type of recipes could be expected during war time.

We will also listen to an audio of Laurie Holmes who describes what it was like to be caught in the middle of an air bomb attack.

After leaving England we will be traveling back to the United States to Washington D.C.. We will be touring the National Holocaust Memorial Museum. Here we will be introduced to Anne Frank in the online exhibit of her life. This is such a wonderful site that provides audios of interviews with Anne’s closest living relative and the exhibition co-curator who describes the importance of Anne’s story. Here, we can use the zoom tool to get a close-up look at Anne’s original writings.

This museum offers such a tremendous wealth of information that it is advised that you wander all you want. However, just a word of caution to you that these exhibitions may be disturbing as they deal with such a grave subject.

Our final destination is #263 Prinsengracht, in Amsterdam – the original house of Anne Frank. We will discover the life of Anne Frank through pictures and stories. We will also explore the history of the house and be able to view the actual Secret Annex. There is a virtual exhibit where we can see actual film footage of Anne and her view from the hiding place. This destination allows us to get as close as possible to Anne Frank’s world as she lived it and offers a wonderful introduction as we begin reading her diary.